The milking of cows has been highly automated in recent years. Automatic milking machines, electronic cow identification systems and computer operated feeding stations are gaining wide acceptance to improve productivity and efficiency.
In automatic milking machines, teat cups are applied to a cow's teats, a pulsating pneumatic or vacuum source is applied to the teat cups to effect milking, and the resulting milk is drawn by a vacuum from the teats to a milk collection tank.
One implication with automatic milking machines is that the farmer need not be present at the milking event. This has the effect that the teats of the milked animal are not visually inspected when automatic milking machines are employed. Previously, with manual application of teat cups, the farmer had the possibility to see and feel the teats of the animal noting whenever an animal, for instance had an injury, or was extremely dirty.
GB 2 272 971 describes a method of examining milking animals. That method comprises the steps of preparing an image reference record of an animal, subsequently preparing a further image record of an animal at a presentation for milking, comparing the reference and further image records, determining differences from said comparison and deciding from any said differences whether the animal presenting for milking is to be milked at this presentation. The reference image of GB 2 272 971 necessarily needs to be an image of clean teats since the image is used as reference for detecting dirt. Thus, the reference image is an image of a teat that has been manually prepared and is thus not an image suitable for detecting a specific teat condition.